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Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Why do dogs eat poo?

Today’s post ventures into
some gross territory, but I’ve seen a cluster of clients recently all
desperately seeking answers to the following question: why does my dog eat poo?

(Before I go on, please rest
assured that I too find this an icky subject and am endeavouring to discuss it
with minimal grossness, however if you have a sensitive stomach and this doesn’t
apply to your dog, please don’t read on).

It’s a question that
veterinary science fails to provide a definitive answer for. Poo-eating, or
coprophagia as it is known, is not uncommon in dogs (and it is actually
reported as a disorder in some human patients). For many dogs this little habit
is a transient phase which appears in puppyhood and disappears as dogs grow up,
but for the odd dog it persists.

Why does it happen? Researchers
(and there are few with active portfolios in this area, you can imagine why)
speculate that it may be due to a dietary deficiency. Experimentally, dogs with
severe thiamine (a B vitamin) deficiency will engage in this behaviour, but the
key word here is severe.

Chronic exocrine pancreatic
insufficiency, or any disease that causes malabsorption, is also associated
with this behaviour. Normally these dogs have other signs (weight loss,
diarrhoea) and once the disease is treated the behaviour disappears.

Environmental stress,
boredom and attention seeking have also been suggested as possible triggers.

Is eating poo harmful? The
consensus from the literature has generally been no, but some recent papers
have questioned that assurance. There remains no evidence that your dog eating
its own stool is a major health risk for your dog. That said, at least one
publication suggested that the amount of disgust this disgusting but generally
harmless habit produces in owners can be strong enough to sever the human animal
bond and result in euthanasia. In which case it’s a major risk.

But eating someone else’s
stool can be a health risk to dogs. For example, if that someone else happens
to have a bacterial, parasitic or other infectious disease that is transmitted
via oro-faecal contact then yes, it can make them ill.

One risk I admit I never
considered, until purveying the literature, is the risk of ingestion of second-hand
drugs.

In one case report in the Canadian Veterinary Journal, a
9-year-old Golden retriever became hyperthyroid after eating poo from the other
dog in the household who was been treated for an underactive thyroid. Not
before being through a whole lot of tests first. No one thought to ask – and the
owner didn’t volunteer – whether the dog had a poo-eating habit.

In another case published in
the Journal of the American Veterinary
Medical Association, a 1-year-old crossbreed developed transient signs of
renal insufficiency (urinary incontinence, drinking a lot, peeing a lot, dilute
urine) and increased liver enzymes after swallowing stool from a housemate who
was on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (carprofen).

(I saw one dramatic example
of this, the details of which I won’t go into as apparently my referral letter
made the specialist want to throw up, but suffice to say that secondary
ingestion of stool containing an illicit drug lead to bizarre – fortunately transient
– neurological signs in two French bulldogs).

In both of the published
case reports, the clinical signs resolved once owners cleaned up the yards and
made sure there was no poo left around.

The lesson here is that if
you have a dog with this habit, you need to be particularly cautious if other
dogs in the household are sick or on medication.

So what can we do about it?

The first step is to prevent
all access to faeces (a step I’ll admit I thought was easy until I met a dog
last week who can actually circumvent this process with extreme flexibility. I’m
going to leave that description right there).

Do not panic, wave your arms
about, scream or become overly animated when you see your dog do this – no matter
how grossed out you feel on the inside. You might inadvertently reinforce this
behaviour.

Ensure there is no medical
reason. Ask your veterinarian to perform a physical examination. Adjunctive
tests include blood tests and faecal analysis. Dogs with exocrine pancreatic
insufficiency should have their diet supplemented with pancreatic enzymes.

Eliminate boredom. Make sure
your dog is exercised at least daily (preferably twice) – this also gives dogs
a chance to toilet outside. Provide environmental enrichment such as Kongs and
chew toys.

Feed foods that taste bad
after digestion – pineapple is said to work a treat but I’ve heard mixed
reports.

Adjust the diet. Diets high
in carbs may enhance coprophagic tendencies so foods higher in protein are
preferable. You can try supplementing a diet. There is a product called Wild
Forage which is used for this. It’s made by Ausrichter from a biological peat
extracted from moors in upper Austria.

Veterinary Ethics: Navigating Tough Cases

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